


The Apology Letter

by m_hart



Series: Wild Tigers I Have Known [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5010688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_hart/pseuds/m_hart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine's apology letter to Combeferre, written and delivered with the assistance of Jehan and Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Apology Letter

Dear Combeferre,

 

God, fuck.   
            D’you know, it’s funny, I’ve written this fucking letter before. Like fourteen different drafts, I swear. Back when it was actually relevant and might still have meant anything. I wrote the first one like an hour after you left, and then I threw that one away and started again, and then I threw that one away too, and just kept going, you know? Until I stopped.   
            Because how do you even apologize for something like that? For that fucking embarrassment? Every time I wrote it I just got so fucking overwhelmed because I wasn’t just apologizing for a shitty thing I did, I was trying to apologize for my whole damn self, for the kind of person I was. The kind of person I am.   
  
            Well, this time I had help. Two dramatic, sentimental assholes with a vocabulary that Merriam-Webster couldn’t hold a candle to and who have, combined, at least as much experience fucking up as I do. Two clowns alternating as therapist and thesaurus. Maybe this time I can get it right.   
  
            So they came up with a few “pre-letter-writing warm-ups”, fantastic exercises in procrastination, and most of them were stupid (Jehan wanted me to meditate, like with special incense or something) but one of them was alright. I was just supposed to write down what I would want someone to do if I were in your shoes. So I made a big list, and it mostly involved letting me punch them in the face and performing some servile sex acts, but the very first one I wrote was that I’d want to them to tell me exactly what they did, in gritty detail, so I could be sure they knew exactly what they had done. What exactly they ought to be ashamed of.   
  
            So here goes. A frank account of how I done fucked up.   
  
            On February 3rd of 2012, (that’s totally made up, it was sometime in February but fuck if I keep a calendar of my mistakes) I, Éponine Thénardier, did thoroughly copulate with a slimeball who was _not_ my explicitly exclusive and monogamously intended boyfriend. (How’s that for turning in all my five dollar words? Are you impressed?)

            When said boyfriend discovered us red-handed, we did not even have the decency to cease our fornication. (To be 100% honest and fair I did actually tell him to stop and attempt to get up. He wasn’t really keen on that because he was like *this* close to coming.) (Sorry that was TMI)

            Furthermore, in my embarrassment I proceeded to ignore all attempts at contact by said boyfriend, including but not limited to deleting texts and deliberately missing calls.

            I never properly broke up with him (you). I never actually spoke to him (you) again. That was the most heartless and childish way I possibly could have handled the situation.

            And because I’m being really fucking honest and straight with you: It wasn’t the only time I fucked him.

            He and I were having sex before you and I got together. I totally did tell him I wanted to stop and be exclusive with you, and I _did_. For like five whole months. But um. After that, we… yeah. It picked up again. So that’s the truth. It was about, uh, December on.

            And just to be SUPER fucking honest and straight: The guy I fucked was also in a “””monogamous””” relationship with someone else. Well, with Jehan. Double the adultery.  
  
            So there it is, Combeferre. I know what I did. I hope it makes you feel better for me to say it all, I genuinely hope that it does. You deserve to feel vindicated. (Grantaire gave me that one. I was stuck on ‘you deserve to know that I was a huge fat asshole and you did nothing wrong’. He said vindicated meant about the same thing and I’m hesitantly trusting him.)   
            And here it is, the real deal, the shit I should have had the guts to say three years ago:  
            I am so, so, so _fucking sorry_.   
            I am the _sorriest_ motherfucker, I am _utterly remorseful_.   
            I hope you never wondered what you did to deserve something so heartless and humiliating, because I swear to god, you never did, you _never_ deserved it, and you never deserved… me. Fuck, I am sorry that I ever let you believe that I could be a good girlfriend. You should have had so much better… so much better than what I gave you, and what I did to you in the end.

            If it makes any difference to know, I really did love you, Combeferre. To this day I think you were the best thing I ever had, and for a long, long time I kicked myself every day for ruining my shot at happiness with someone so beautiful and kind and smart and wonderful, who loved me as much as you did. I thought I’d gotten over it, but when I saw you again I felt like dying. You used to be such a gawky thing, you were handsome in a skinny teenage way, but Combeferre, you have grown to be something out of the movies, and if your personality has grown as much then I am ten times the fool for losing you.    
            The hardest part of writing this letter, then and now, was trying so fucking hard not to make excuses for myself. Because really, I have a million excuses all ready to go. Hell, I’ve been trying to justify this to myself for three years, I have whole speeches I wrote in the shower to convince you why none of this was really my fault!  “I was a different person”, “it was my environment”, “it was my family”, “he pressured me”, “I was a stupid teenager”. All the shit I tell myself to make it easier to sleep. And I’d like to tell you, Combeferre, that I have grown and changed. That I used to be a cruel kid, I was vicious and mean. I was careless. I was self-absorbed. And I want to tell you all about how _now_ I’m the kind of person who saved her sisters from a dangerous home, who works to provide for them, who even pursues her passions, like you were always encouraging me to do…   
            But it’s bullshit.   
            I’ve always pursued my passions. I loved that you showed up to my shows, but I’d always been dancing, and I still do now. It’s not new.   
            I’ve always loved and protected my sisters. I’ve always looked after them in a way my parents never could. When I was nine years old and Azelma was seven I held her while my mother was yanking out the weave of some other fuckin mom at the studio, _I_ was the one to comfort her while my mother acted a fucking child.   
            I have always been willing to work hard. I work hard at everything I do, even when it’s not shit I ought to do.  
            And I have been cruel, vicious, mean, careless and self-absorbed at the same damn time. I have made lunch for Azelma when my mother forgot, and turned around in the same half minute to bark a foster sister out of the kitchen. I’ve worked all night to _perfect_ a routine till my calves were shaking and my toes were bleeding, and then threatened someone else until they did my chores because I didn’t feel like it. I want so fucking bad to tell you that I was shit and now I’m good, I want to tell you that I’ve changed, but in the recent weeks I have become starkly aware of the fact that I haven’t changed at all.

            But I’ve also become aware… that maybe I can.  
            And in the meantime, while I work on that radical journey of self discovery and character development, I hope that you will teach me what I can do to make this better. Seriously, let me know what I can do. What in god’s name can be done to – this one’s all Jehan – to _atone_? Can I beg on my knees, bring you flowers, buy you a whole year pass to the air and space museum, do your homework for the next four years of university, suck your _glory_ of a cock again, wait on you hand and foot? Could any of that shit truly absolve how childish and shitty and petty and cruel my actions were? Could any of it erase the fact that you had to literally _walk in_ on your first girlfriend getting fucked by someone else? The universe has given me a chance to admit my fuckups and try to right them… And I understand if you want no part of that, and no part of me, and I won’t blame you if you ask me to never speak to you again. You deserve that, after all this.

            But I’d be blessed if you wanted to let me atone.

            Maybe I haven’t changed yet, but I would like to try.

 

\-- Sincerely sorry,

Eponine

 

PS: So were you gay the whole time or are you like bisexual or what

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Eponine,

I forgive you. No flowers or blowjobs required.

That annual pass to the air and space museum is tempting though.

Get coffee with me and catch up?

\-- Yours,

Combeferre

 

PS. Status report pending. “Bisexual or what” seems likely.  
  


  
  
  
  
  


  
  


 


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